Sunday, August 5, 2012

Not aghast at August

August has traditionally been my least favorite month. It's hot, it's the end of summer break, and there's usually not anything going on. For the last two years it meant I had to sacrifice my BYU life for a few months.

But this year I don't dislike it so much. It is indeed the end of my summer break--but it's also the beginning of my summer break. Finals are this week and I'm so excited--not for the finals but for the term to be over. And August is better than most of July because it's closer to September. August means I will start my first fall semester ever (in college). I kind of miss my fall breaks, but I'm excited for something new. Everyone tells me that fall semester is better than winter, and I believe it. Winter is just so blah and lemitsy.

This week was full of randomness and spontaneity. On Tuesday I had a wedding reception to go to in Taylorsville, but I didn't want to drive all the way up there just for the reception. I think I only spent five minutes at the reception; I spent longer in line to say hi to my former companion than I did after seeing him. There weren't any suitable desserts (i.e. there weren't any popsicles), so I left early. I went and visited my aunt and cousins, since they were close by. I don't usually see family on weeknights!

In my French class on Wednesday, our teacher was gone, and we were discussing how we still needed to do a cultural activity. Everyone wanted to go to the French bakery here (to buy French goods and speak French), and they asked who had a car. I said I had a car if we could be back by 1:00. So five other people went with me and we walked down to my parking lot and drove to the pâtisserie. There weren't any suitable desserts there (i.e. there weren't any popsicles), but they had lunch items and I bought a demie baguette (the sign at the pâtisserie was actually wrong--they left the last e off of demie) and a croque monsieur (embarrassingly, I said une instead of un). A croque monsieur ("Mister Crunchy") is a hot sandwich with ham and cheese. It was as greasy as something off of the McDonald's breakfast menu. When we got back from the pâtisserie, I didn't have time to eat it before class, so I stuffed it in a plastic bag in my backpack and went to campus. After class, I went to eat it, but it had gotten cold, and the microwave in the SWKT didn't work, so I had to eat it cold. I think it would have been good warm, but since it was cold, it got progressively nastier with each bite. Fortunately, the baguette was still good when I got home, since it doesn't matter what temperature you eat it at. Usually I stay on campus all day until classes are over, but that day I went home twice between classes--once because of the pâtisserie, and once to say goodbye to Hanna, one of the horses I got to know this summer.

On Friday, I did perhaps the most unusual thing I've done all summer (and maybe all year!). A girl in my ward, Michelle, invited as many people as she could invite to some event she was super excited about. It was Harry and the Potters, a rock group that sings songs about Harry Potter, and the Potter Puppet Pals, which you may have seen on YouTube:
After her frequent invitations, I decided to just go for it and go. We drove up to this ghetto venue in some alley in Salt Lake where the two groups were performing. There were tons of people crammed inside a little shack with the smells of bodies and Word of Wisdom violations all around. There we were all sitting on the floor watching a puppet show. It was funny, but I personally found it inappropriate for a puppet show; if it were a movie, I wouldn't watch it.

After the puppet show, Harry and the Potters set up. They're just two guys, dressed somewhat like Harry Potter, and a drummer, and they sing short songs about different things from the books. I like Harry Potter as much as anyone else (the books--I don't watch the movies), but I'm not a fanatic, and I felt pretty out of place among all the people who not only were enormous Harry Potter fans but knew all the words to all of the Harry and the Potters songs. It didn't help issues that I'm generally unenthusiastic about everything and that I don't like noise. One of their songs was in honor of Hermione's organization S.P.E.W., and the whole song consisted of them going in the audience and putting microphones to people's mouths and having them say spew. (Yeah, they're not going to win a Grammy anytime soon.)  I knew from the start that they were going to have me say it, because I was surrounded by girls, which meant I was taller than most of them, and because my emotionless state was quite obvious. But I was a good boy and said "Spew!" when they put the mike to my face. During their playing, the Puppet Pals went through the audience, and one touched my head. This summer I got Jan Terri's autograph and the Harry Potter Potter Puppet Pal touched my head. What YouTube star will I have an interaction with next? Harry and the Potters had put up a banner with the Hogwarts logo on it, and during the last song, they were playing so loud that it fell off the wall. Kind of like this:

I'm glad that I went, because if I hadn't, I would have wondered what I missed. But did I enjoy it? That question is harder to answer. 

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